Cheese and Corn Chowder - Cooking with The Pioneer Woman

It's been a while, but I promise, I have been cooking. I just haven't been cooking a ton from Ree. I have a lot on the list to make, I've just been relying on old recipes lately. I am dying to make her Apple Dumplings. It looks and sounds amazing, but has the most interesting twist in incredients.

 

Now that it's turning cooler, I immediately start thinking of chowders and chili. I can't make as many as I would like, my hubby isn't one for any type of soup and he hates chili, but I've been able to get him to eat this Cheese and Corn Chowder. And, it's become a Christmas Eve tradition in our home. And when I say a Christmas Eve tradition, I mean that I made it last Christmas Eve in hopes of making it every year after that, which would make it a tradition.

 

This chowder is so easy! You cut a few things up, throw it in an enormous skillet and let it simmer. The cooking time might be a little long, but the ease is what I love. That, and the taste! Let's get started!

 

Chop up some onion and add it to butter. Can I just say that the smell alone is amazing! Once softened, add some chopped up bacon!

 

Add chopped red, yellow and green bell peppers to the amazing aroma of the bacon, onion and butter concoction. Then add the star of the show, corn! I use frozen corn, but Ree suggests five ears of fresh corn.

Add a tablespoon of flour....

 

And three cups of chicken broth. Add some half and half as well.

 

Grate Monterey Jack and Pepper Jack cheese. You add this to the end. Result = amazing!

 

Add the cheese, and green onions if you remember to purchase them, and you have an incredible meal! I added corn bread muffins as a side, which I crumble up and add to my chowder. So good!

 

I promise, this pot-o-goodness is totally worth making during this fabulous time of year! We had so much left, even after two dinners, that we passed left-overs onto my parents. Gotta love a meal that keeps on giving! Check out the recipe in full here!

 

Happy eating!

 



Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce - Cooking with The Pioneer Woman

Over the weekend, I had every intention of completing number 18 on the 40 Before 40 list. Time is running out, people! I have just a little over a month to complete 19 total before November 3rd! (Between you and me, I'm not sure I'm going to complete the list!) So on Saturday, I was going to use Giada De Laurentiis's recipe for homemade pasta, but instead, I went shopping with my mom! The latter was much more fun. Not that making pasta wouldn't have been fun, but who doesn't love shopping with their mom?

 

Even though I didn't make pasta, I still went with Ree's recipe for pasta with tomato cream sauce. See, I was going to make my own fettucini to use in the recipe, it calls for fettucini, but again I went shopping. My mom and I stopped by my house to gather the ingredients I had purchased before hand, stopped by the store for salad ingredients, and other odds and ends, and got home around 6:30. We scurred around to get dinner started, unloaded groceries while cooking, took photos while making the meal, and got dinner on the table by 7:05! Nothing like a 30 minute meal!

 

Below are the deets and photos!

 

Cook your chopped onion and garlic in olive and butter! Believe me when I tell you it smelled amazing! Add tomato sauce once your onions are soft.

 

 

Once that's been warmed through, add heavy cream. Decedent and simply an amazing concoction of ingredients! 

 

How pretty is that? Such a warm, soft color. And, it looks even better with Parmesan cheese!

 

Add your cooked pasta.

And serve! We did make salads, we needed something healthy beside the plate, and a little garlic toast to sop up the sauce!

 



 

I can't tell you how amazing this dish was! Everyone agreed that this is a keeper. We also decided that shrimp and chicken would compliment the pasta as well. Check out Ree's website for the recipe. Trust me, you are going to want to make it this week!!



Almost Homemade Calzones - Cooking with the Pioneer Woman

Every Sunday is the same in my house. We wake up, play most of the morning, eat some form of breakfast and then I start making my weekly grocery store list. We come up with menu for the week and it's generally planned by browsing through cookbooks, old episodes of show favorites on Food Network or old standbys that we love. I've really been trying to change things up in the kitchen and making new meals. Some of them are easy, some are hard. Some are one pot creations and some use every pot and bowl in the house! And my kitchen has been a wreck night after night!

 

This past Sunday was nothing different. The scene was making homemade pizza dough for use in homemade calzones from, you guessed it, The Pioneer Woman! I didn't get a chance to actually make the crust earlier in the day for Sunday dinner, so I was making it for dinner on Monday. So easy, right? Well, it was easy but it so didn't turn out like it was supposed to! I didn't create a ball in the mixer, nor did it create a ball when trying to form it by hand. Instead, I had a substance that resembled something along the lines of paste that literally stretched from one hand to the next, creating a cobweb effect along the way! I placed it in an oiled bowl, as suggested, threw that in the refridgerator and when I opened the door the next day, it had grown three times its size!! Not sure if this is even useable or edible! Guess I will try again some other time. Side note, I had the most amazing sous chef!

 

So here's what I did. First, I added warm water and yeast to a bowl and let that sit a spell.

 

 

Then in another bowl, I added my dry ingredients and mixed them together with olive oil until just combined.

 

The I added the water and yeast mixture, slowly, into the mixer with the other ingredients. (The green spoonula you see is one of McKinley's. He was "helping mama".)

At this point, it was supposed to start coming together and the dough should have formed a ball. 

 

Here my sous chef is keeping an eye on things to make sure the dough turns out correctly.

He's helping the mixer along as I'm telling him not to put the spoon in the bowl while the mixer is going!

 



 

And here is the unformed dough that is literally paste!

So the next day, as in Monday night of the calzone dinner, my husband runs to the store for dinner rolls. (That's what Ree used during the episode that she made calzones. I wanted to attempt the pizza dough to make it more authentic.) Here is how you make homemade calzones!

 

Brown some hamburger meat along with chopped onion.

 

 

While the hamburger is browning you better get to grating your cheese! You need Mozzarella and Monterrey Jack. And, after the meat has browned, at some tomatoes. The recipe called for Ro-Tel tomatoes and chilies, but I was thinking that McKinley might eat it, and didn't want anything too spicy. I added diced tomatoes instead.

 

Add your grated cheese to Ricotta and mix together.  

 

Add the cheese mixture to the cooled meat mixture. Set aside.

 

Now, this is when I would have used my "from scratch" pizza dough but that didn't happen. Enter the dinner rolls purchased at the grocery store! I started this process by flouring my surface, dinner roll and rolling pin.

 

Start rolling out each roll, flipping sides, rotating and flouring when needed.

 



 

Fill each calzone with some of the meat mixture. As you can see, I have added pepperoni as well. The recipe called for hamburger and breakfast sausage, but opted for pepperoni.

 

Fold each half over the other and press closed with a fork. As you can see, mine are very thin. I'm thinking of using a larger dough of some sort next time. Maybe the from scratch pizza dough.....

 





Place each calzone on a baking sheet that's been lined with parchment paper. Helps for easier cleanup if some of the filling oozes out. Drizzle with olive oil and brush each one to ensure it's completely covered. Then bake!



Serve along side your favorite side. We had a salad, with our homegrown cherry tomatoes. For day two, I served up fries. Still haven't attempted her homemade french fries. They were so good and differently a recipe to experiment with in different fillings!

 

Want the ends and outs on the pizza crust and calzone recipe? Check out the pizza crust here and notice how awesome hers look! See the calzone recipe here!  



Too Hot to Eat - Cooking with The Pioneer Woman

 

So, it's September but it feels nothing like fall! It's still so hot here. Like upper 90s hot. On Sunday, we spent the afternoon cheering on the Kansas City Royals, in the shade, but even in the shade it was still hot. When we got home, we were a super sweaty mess, but that doesn't stop the age old question of "What's for dinner?" Does anyone else out there feel that when it's this hot nothing sounds good? I would even go so far as to say that I don't want to even think about eating. No one else? Well, that's how I feel when it's this hot, but I still have a family to feed.

 

I've been planning the Shrimp Stir Fry for a couple of weeks now, but other meals were either pushed to the foreground, or I would forgot to thaw the shrimp. It was usually the latter. So yesterday morning I finally put the shrimp in the fridge, determined to make the stir fry. So glad I did! This was the perfect meal to combate the heat. Yes, the kitchen was hot as I stood over an open flame on the stove, but the end result was a cool, veggie filled meal! And a meal that took no time at all, once all the chopping was done.

 

 

The other main ingredient of this dish is shrimp. I love shrimp, but I'm so intimidated by it at times. Cooking it scares me. Does anyone else have this complex? I am so afraid that I'm going to under cook it and get us all sick. Then I'm afraid I'm going to over cook it and make it taste the sole of my shoes! (However, if it's like the sole of a Christian Louboutin, then I might eat a pound of it!)

 

 

What I discovered last night, after I cooked it properly, is that it was just pink. It wasn't nearly as browned and beautiful as Ree's. Turns out, I should have taken the time to pat the shrimp dry after it had thawed. Because of this, I had a lot of liquid from the butter, olive oil and water. You learn something new everyday!

 

 

Once you have the shrimp cooked, remove it and place it on a plate for later. Then start cooking the veggies! You need zucchini, corn and cherry tomatoes. YUM!

 

 

Once those are all warmed through, add the shrimp back in to re-heat. Chop up some yummy basil. Mine came from my herb garden and it smelled amazing post cut! You are also going to need a lemon. Just the juice.

 

 

 

Now it's time to serve it up! I placed ours over a bed of brown rice. I just used plain old Boil in Bag rice. Took 10 minutes and cooked up while I was prepping everything else. You could also serve over a pasta of your choice or simply serve it as is. Such a great end of summer, incredibly hot out dinner!

 

 

Want to know more about this amazingly refreshing dinner? Check it out here. This Ree knows what she's talking about and cooking up in her kitchen!



Cooking with The Pioneer Woman - Sloppy Joes

I have to admit. Growing up I can't recall if my mom ever made sloppy joes for dinner so I never really thought about them as a grown up. It appears that for kids, sloppy joe night is a staple. For us, chicken for dinner was a staple! So much chicken....When I think of sloppy joes, I think of the version in the can. I don't really like making dinners from a can, unless it's Spaghetti O's with franks! That's also how I feel about Hamburger Helper. I just can't bring myself to make any version of Hamburger Helper!

 

When I saw the sloppy joe episode of The Pioneer Woman, Ree cooked up some for her gang and the cowboys showing the kids some horse riding tricks. I wasn't totally game but I asked Joel if he would like sloppy joes one night and he jumped at it. He said he knew it wasn't really my kind of meal so not a big deal if we didn't have them. Just one of the many reasons I love him. There are several things that aren't my kind of meal, so we never have them. (See Hamburger Helper above.) However, I thought I would take the plunge!

 

The first time I made them, I remember looking at the meat sauce thinking something didn't look right. It was really runny and didn't look anything like what Ree made. I read back over the recipe and realized I had forgot the ketchup! Only the most important ingredient! I added it at the last minute which didn't harm the meal in any way. And, I actually liked them. They were on the menu again this week and I made them last night. I didn't forget the ketchup and they turned out just well as they did the first time. However, we didn't have nearly large enough buns. Thank goodness this is another two day meal! After work, I will be stopping off at the store for much larger buns because these sloppy joes deserve a large home!!

 

 

When more time allows, I am up for the challenge of making Ree's homemade french fries but boy do they look time consuming! Time consuming, but I bet they are pretty amazing!

 

Ready to make homemade sloppy joes? Get the recipe here! I can't wait for McKinley's first sloppy joe night! Messy, and hopefully, amazing!



Cooking with The Pioneer Woman

The other day I jokingly tweeted to The Pioneer Woman that I should blog about cooking my way through her cookbooks the way Julie Powell did with Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I love watching her Saturday morning cooking show on the Food Network. So much so that I have my favorites saved and I will go back and watch old episodes. I especially loved the first Christmas one that aired in 2011. And, because the show includes her family of four, cowboy husband and working cattle ranch, I feel like I know them and that we've been friends for years. Okay, two years.

 

So who is The Pioneer Woman? Ree Drummond, that's who! As she says in her Saturday morning intro, she's a mother, a wife, a blogger, a photographer and an accidental country girl. She, and her family, live on a sprawling working cattle ranch in Oklahoma and she cooks for a lot of people! What I love about her show is I truly feel like I'm part of her family on a weekly basis. She's your neighbor, one who lives miles away, and she truly makes you feel at home. And her recipes are meals I would cook and do! Which is why I came up with this truly unoriginal idea!

 

In addition to her show, Ree has a blog. Actually, she had the blog first where she photographs her kids, the ranch and the food she makes. She posts about everything, but what I love most is that when posting recipes, she provides step by step photos and directions. When cooking,  I often wonder what it should look like during the process. Am I doing it right? Did I cut that correctly? Is that what it's supposed to look like? So while thinking about blogging my way through her cookbooks, I thought I should probably take photos like her. (Wish I had thought about this while preparing the first seven meals of hers. Guess we will have repeat meals...)

 

Last night I made one of my favorite summer recipes of Ree's, her Grilled Chicken Salad with Feta, Fresh Corn and Blueberries. This is one of the best, filling salads we've tried and we've been testing salads all summer! And, it's a great two day meal, which is something I love. I am constantly on the hunt for two day meals so I don't feel like I'm cooking every day of the week. Who has time for that? I digress....

 

So here are some photos as I prepped for the salad. Joel grilled the chicken and corn while I cut up everything else. The only thing I do differently with the salad is add lettuce. I added romaine and lettuce straight out of garden! So without further ado, the first in a long series of cooking with Ree!

 

This is the salad bowl lettuce from our garden. I know it doesn't look like much which is why I added the Romaine as well!

 

Celery and red onion are amazing together. Who knew?

I love sweet corn! And grilled, sweet corn is heaven!

 

Slice the corn off the cob. Gorgeous!

A sweet treat to the salad is blueberries. Trust me, this combination of fruits and veggies is awesome!

 



 

The dressing of feta, half & half, mayo, sour cream and lemon juice is so good! A little goes a long way!

 

 And there's the finished product. Please, try this salad! Grab the recipe here and print it off! You won't be sorry!